


Confusion

by thepurplewombat



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, dalish inquisitor is not what Cullen expected, in which Cullen is confused by freckles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 16:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen doesn't know how to deal with the Inquisitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confusion

Cullen isn’t sure how to talk to the Inquisitor. She is a mage, but so different from the mages he knew that trying to apply the same rules to her seems ridiculous. She is an elf, but so different from the defeated half-people he’s seen in the alienages that they might as well have been different races entirely. He doesn’t understand anything about her, doesn’t understand her history or her heritage or her attitude, and most of all he doesn’t understand why that bothers him so much. He knows many people he doesn’t understand, after all, and it’s never been this itch under his armor, that leads him to watch her so closely that Cassandra comes to him one evening and asks him quietly if he has any doubts about the Inquisitor that he’d like to share. He blushes and stammers and assures her that no, no doubts, Seeker, and she leaves satisfied.

When she is gone, he thinks about all the things about the Inquisitor that he doesn’t understand, that don’t match up with what he expected.

Once, she had been walking with him, watching the troops train, and he’d tripped and fell, his knee giving out as he tried to catch himself. She’d pulled him back to his feet and he’d ended up against her for a moment, until he could pull away and dust himself off. Her body was hard and firm, ropy muscle over strong bone. His mind said she was a mage, but there was nothing of the pampered-housecat helpless softness of a Circle mage about her, and he stood confused for a moment, wondering.

And Maker, she had a mouth on her! No elf or mage in the world he knew would have talked so to a human man, but there she was teasing and taunting and essentially daring the world to come on if it was hard enough (and she’d actually said that, to a Templar in full armor, once. He had, and he wasn’t).

She had no shame, and whenever he thought that he winced at himself, because it was _true_ dammit! She had no shame, and she had nothing to be ashamed of, but she was an elf and a mage and in his world, those things were both shame enough for any person, deserved or no. Her refusal to be ashamed of who and what she was – her pointed reminders that she was _Dalish_ , and would always be, no matter what labels the Inquisition or the Chantry tried to hang on her – or to change anything about her for the comfort of the humans around her, was bracing, if a little terrifying. One might wish that she would stop blithely reminding everyone she spoke to that she did not hold to the Maker’s Chant, but he suspected one might as well wish for the sun as a chariot with stars to pull it, while one was wishing for impossible things.

She didn’t look at him like a mage looked at a Templar. He had grown used to it, had been raised under the fearful hating eyes of mages who knew that one day their lives would be in his hands. She didn’t lower her eyes or her voice when she spoke to him, didn’t fold her hands in front of her so that he could see she wasn’t doing magic on the sly. She didn’t care if she offended him, didn’t fear any consequences from his anger at all. He’d never personally given any mage reason to fear him, but the uniform he wore was reason enough, and wasn’t that indictment of the Templars enough, that the very people whose safety they were dedicated to were afraid to breathe wrong in their presence?

Her face was another thing that bothered him. Not the markings – those he saw not-unfrequently on alienage elves in the cities, although usually they were less stark than what she boasted – but her skin itself. No woman of stature in the world he had lived in would have gone about with wind-roughened cheeks, freckles undimmed by cosmetics, the way she did. In a strange way it was more attractive than the smoothness of the Circle mages, the pallor of the city elves. She was a healthy outdoors creature, sturdy and healthy, and it showed in the colour on her cheeks, on her wind-chapped lips and tousled hair.

No mage Cullen had ever met could ride the way she did. She sat the horse as though they were one creature, living and breathing in rhythm. Sometimes he found himself watching her work the horses. Later, when the young man from her clan has been and gone, he sees her working with the halla. He doesn’t quite understand how that works – the boy had arrived, put the animal’s reins into the Inquisitor’s hand with a “she insisted,” bade the halla farewell as though saying goodbye to a sister or a beloved aunt, and been gone before the sun rose the next morning. The Inquisitor never rode anything else these days, and she had spent hours and hours with the Horsemaster. The saddle they had come up with was the most beautiful piece of workmanship he had ever seen.

And then one day she comes riding back into Skyhold, the sun silver on her black hair, her face pink from exertion, with blood splashed up to her knees. She tumbles off the halla and gives it a kiss in passing, and then she comes to stand in front of him, smiling up at him with sparkling eyes, and suddenly, he is sure.

He may not understand her, may never understand her, but he is willing to spend the rest of his life trying.


End file.
